Google said on Friday it has a little more spring cleaning to do, announcing it would kill off several more products beyond those put on the chopping block in July . The latest crop of products slated for extinction includes AdSense for RSS news feeds, reward “badges” in Google News and a service that let people upload their own photo to use as a background for Google.com searches. Google also is tweaking how much storage it allots to both free and paid Google Drive accounts. In the past users could get 5GB on the storage service and another 5GB for Picasa photos. Now both will come from the same account. Leaving aside the question of whether late September qualifies as spring cleaning, the regular pruning of less popular products would seem to allow the company an opportunity to make sure it doesn’t get spread too thin. Google said that with the latest list, it will have gotten rid of some 60 services since the cleaning started last fall. Products that have gotten the ax over the last year include iGoogle, Google Desktop and Fast Flip. “Technology offers so many opportunities to help improve users’ lives,” Google said in its blog post announcing the changes

Amazon has started rolling out a new program that will provide short-term loans to merchants, which sell their products on Amazon.com. The program was first discovered by Channel Advisor , after Amazon sent detailed letters to merchants about the program. Channel Advisor provides tips to merchants, who sell items on marketplaces, like Amazon and eBay. An Amazon spokesperson did not return phone calls seeking comment. In the letters, Amazon said the new service, called Amazon Lending, can be used to “purchase inventory and increase your sales on Amazon.com.” If a merchant is approved for the program, the funds will be advanced to their Amazon Seller account within five days, and then a monthly fee will be automatically deducted from the merchant’s account. While many consumers may think that everything they buy on Amazon comes directly from the retailer, in many cases it is coming from an independent sellers, who choose to list their products on the marketplace for more visibility. Amazon collects 99 cents a sale, plus a percentage of each transaction if a merchant is selling fewer than 40 items, or $40 a month plus a revenue share if they are selling more. By lending capital to its sellers, Amazon may be able to help merchants increase their sales, since one of the many constraints that they face is having access to capital. This can be especially true ahead of the holidays as merchants stock up on inventory to meet additional demand. The loans, however, won’t come cheap. According to Channel Advisor, several merchants were offered an interest rate of 13 percent. Other companies, like Atlanta-based Kabbage, serve online merchants, which typically have a hard time getting attention from traditional lenders. Kabbage, which has raised almost $50 million in venture capital, has now lent money to sellers — mostly on eBay, Amazon and Yahoo — that earn a combined $800 million in annual sales.

Eastman Kodak Co. will wind down its desktop-printer unit next year, pulling the plug on a business that for half a decade was central to Chief Executive Antonio Perez’s plan to turn around the company. The decision will cost Kodak $90 million, as the company lays off staff and writes down the value of its consumer-printing assets. It also will leave the company even smaller as it works to emerge from bankruptcy protection sometime next year. Read the rest of this post on the original site »

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Talk NYC/WW is your daily download of the tech, marketing and advertising news you need to know. It’s smartly curated to keep you up to speed on the innovators and innovations that are shaking up the digital world today.